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Topic: Maytag refrigerator blowing fuses (Read 8770 times)

Wondering what would cause a refrigerator to blow fuses. It happens on any outlet. I ran into my plumber friend who happens to be going to the same house tomorrow because the customers electric hot water heater doesn't work. I suspect the house wiring. What can I look for?

Besides an ampprobe, you'd be looking for excess current draw from the refrigerator upon startup and during the defrost cycle when the heater is on.

Thos are the most critical current-drawing events. You'll find out how to initiate a defrost cycle from the manual. It pays to have your voltmeter attached to the same outlet to monitor for voltage drop as well, since this will eventually throw any self-respecting breaker.

I was there for about an hour and the breaker never tripped. The relay/overload did click a few times making the refrig lights brighter then dimmer. The timer was very noisy but it worked good. The hot water heater also started working sometime the night before.

One thing you have to watch on the MSD models is a bad ADC board. When this board starts to fail, besides skipping the defrost cycles later on, will begin to short-cycle the compressor. I have walked into a home and heard this board chattering away, causing the lights to flicker, etc.

If you are sure that compressor is not on the way out, look for a new adaptive defrost board soon. I'd still put a hard-start on the compressor to be sure.

You never mentioned monitoring the voltage during startup, which I am sort of disappointed in you for.

Sorry Repair-man, I didn't follow procedure but the guy plugged it in as soon as I got behind it and said it would trip the breaker in about 5 minutes so I let it go and inspected the wiring. It didn't trip the breaker after 15 minutes so I let it run so it was cold enough to test the defrost cycle. By the way, this model doesn't have an ADC board, it has the manual timer. There was a ground wire attached to the base of the compressor and the other end wasn't attached to anything. After an hour of running good except for a couple clicks from the relay I left. I talked to the guy a few minutes ago and its been running good all day. I ordered a new start relay even though this model was not on the recall list.

No it doesn't have an ADC board. Also, the relay I bought for this model doesn't match. The good news is that the problem is solved. I went back today because the refrig. kicked out in the middle of the night. This refrigerator is in a new built garage that this couple also lives in. I discovered that every outlet in the building (except the one in the ceiling for the door opener) is linked to a ground fault outlet. After running an extension cord to the ceiling everything is fine. You learn something new everyday. Also, the service manual shows this model with a defrost timer. The next paragraph talks about the ADC as "this new control".